


Meanderer

by Hasty (UniformedServiceman)



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen, Late at Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 18:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11110557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniformedServiceman/pseuds/Hasty
Summary: Gideon Grey lives and cannot sleep.





	Meanderer

Sunday mornings are busy. I wake up early and make extra batches of the irregular stuff to be ready when all the moneyed folk of Bunnyburrow come in. Coffee cakes and all that, not pies, which is a nice changeup. It makes me think about what I’m doing. But to tell the truth, it’s not all that satisfying. From what I see, stopping by here is just a show to ‘em. Maybe they come because they want to see friends, maybe they think it says something about them, but either way all the rich folk come now and they’re there for each other, not me. 

And they’re peculiar about it, too. I’ve seen a couple animals wait outside for a friend to arrive, then greet them like they just happened to stop by at the same time. Then they come in and chitchat at the back wall, about everything but about nobody. In private, they’re not so well-spoken – I know myself, I’ve had a cold I can’t shake since high school with all their talk. But here they jabber about goings-on with the names gone, or the weather, or the Bible. A couple more’ll come in, and they’ll come in at the right time with some new story or important question, feeling out their part in the play.

Then one of ‘em decides they know what they want, and breaks away a little while to come over to me. On Sundays they’re different than the rest of the week. Their eyes dance when they talk like a happy child sizing up a stranger. They bring their mouths to me, and spit a stir of kindness about the cakes and little comments or questions on my life, which they think they have a right to ask because they “didn’t expect me to end up here”. They never make the point in so many words but somehow it’s always said, every Sunday, by someone. And they smile like it’s the last day of their lives. My better faculties tell me to question it but in my heart I can’t. Then they pay and join their friends and one breaks off to come to me and it starts over again. 

I feel a little sorrowful lookin’ at them standing around. It’s not very comfortable. When I fixed the joint up fall before last I didn’t put in anyplace to sit on purpose. I bake better when I’m making big things. At least batches, in full. First thing’s attention – the same reason I don’t make coffee. Selling off a bunch of pieces of a tray and then watching someone chew on it six feet away from me while they look at their phone don’t sit right with me. I know them, they know me, and we don’t talk even if I ain’t doin’ anythin’. It’s acting like we don’t care about each other, and you shouldn’t act that way when you do. But the big thing is when I bake, I make a pan or a tray of something, and I prefer people buy the whole of it. I can’t do anything the same way twice, it’s a special bake for the customer, which I try to tweak a little to them. I’ll call you when its done, and you can come by when you can take it all home. I want to bake for people, not for a display case, and I don’t really want to be on display myself, so they stand around on Sundays and otherwise leave me alone. 

Today it all played out the same, and at two I walked out the back door and down Candle Boulevard to my place. I walk when I can. It was pleasant out. Not muggy. The sun filled the sky up and ran through the fields like the world got mixed with yolk and whipped up thick and smooth. Everything but the animals all got stirred together, and when you walk it flows on beside you like it’s one of those tunnels at the coast where the water’s all around you behind the glass. It all looks the same, and it’s hot. The sound of my feet goes off somewhere and my mind only hears cicadas and the people at the shop in playback. Two miles and I’m home. 

Home’s my own house, now. Big ranch, from the fifties or something although there’s no land past a backyard anymore. One of the bedrooms has a roof leak that won’t quit and in winter the whole place’s an ice rink but I make do. A farm a mile away owns all around it and grows wheat. Tried to meet that family a few times but they’re never home. Mrs. Hopps says it’s for the best; they’ve got old ideas. Figures.

I asked mom to come but she won’t leave the trailer. 

I rent the place cheap from somebody in the city. “Second-generation” is what he calls himself, like movin’ to Zootopia meant crossin’ the ocean. Either way he doesn’t know what his parent’s house is worth and I live right for that. I worked to save up enough for a nice TV and the good sports channels and that’s what most of my afternoons go to. I tune to ZBA for a couple hours before pouring a lasagna together in handmedown pyrex. I always use jar pasta sauce for lasanga. It’s a great sin, my mom said. I told her if I didn’t sin, I wouldn’t have as much to pray about. What’s mealtime grace without a little fear? I cross myself and watch Kevin Cormorant run around like he’s something, which he ain’t anymore. Fit in a prayer for him, too.

He lost. He was the only one who didn’t see it coming, I think. At the start of the fourth quarter they were ten back and Coach Sanderson told him his offense is flagging, and his face screwed up like someone came behind him and tightened its strings. Generally I turn it off when I know who’s going to win.

But not tonight, I guess, ‘cause I’m wide awake. 

The rest of the lasagna sat crooked on the circle burners. I didn’t feel like putting it away so it caked in the pan under the little stovetop light below the microwave. It’d taken ‘til eight o’ clock to finish the cooking, so I ate more than I should’ve, but what could I do? Nothing worse than feeling half-met hunger and the spit it makes dribblin’ down your throat. Eech. I took my empty plate to the sink and wiped the leftover red away, then looked for something else to watch. 

My claw slid around the remote for a while before I let it stop at ZTG. Two stupid late night shows. Don’t remember what happened on them ‘cept one bit where a guest sputtered a swear strong enough that the host made a face. After the first one I took off my clothes and tried to lay down. New moon tonight but the room glowed twilight. Curling under the blanket made my skin run hot under the fur and I felt like I was sick with something. I smelled myself on the bedspread like I was rotting. Nothing comforting, but what forced me out was the salt that came with it that I swear I could feel digging into my muzzle whenever I turned myself over. Drove me mad. I couldn’t think about anything else, imagining myself rolling around under the sheets like in the movies when the killer’s coming close. I saw the salt in my fur and heard my breathing like a loudspeaker. I was too close. It didn’t make sense to lose myself over some sleep so I put my duds back on and went back to the couch for the second show.

The ads changed from big brands to used car lots about midnight and I figured it was time to kill it. My couch is a weird kinda-corduroy thing. It’s too small for company and for me, but I make do. I rummaged around in the corner for a decent old book to read. I hadn’t looked through them in a while. I pushed over their tops and made them fall into each other with a nice thump. Sounded like the wood they came from. Aunt Gladys was right, old books are wonderful things. 

I grabbed a book ‘bout the Oxnard and waddled to the couch. The Oxnard was a grand battleship in our navy half a cent’ry ago. My grandad had been an ensign on board in the big war. I don’t know how, but the cannons made him go deaf, so he wrote my grandmother asking for her to learn sign language. That way, he thought, she could teach him when he got out of the sick ward. They sent him home after a couple of weeks, and when he got off the train, he saw her sitting in the station asleep. He ran over and tried to yell her name to get her attention. Grandma wouldn’t tell me what it sounded like but he never said a thing again.

He’s not in this book. It sticks to fights and the enemy. The writer wanted to talk ‘bout how the history of the war on the water “simply”, so he chose a famous boat as a big example of how it all worked. The strategy, he said, was for our side to strongarm the Opposition into a grand battle in friendly waters, since we had a lot more material than ‘em. So we sent a handful of large ships against packs of destroyers to herd ‘em towards us. Sometimes my eyes would start to stare at the floor and I’d think about other things before I found my way back to the page. I heard nothin’ but a crinkle of paper when I turned the page and the little whistle electricity makes in a lightbulb. The author wrote nicely; pretty soon I could hear him in my head. He had a northern accent and talked very fast but liked to clam up when I got to a word I don’t know. I had a hard time remembering everything but he made it all seem so important that I didn’t feel like I had time to think it over.

He was going to say something about a fire when the light started to tire my eyes and I put him down. My arm went over my shoulder and fumbled for the switch for a couple of seconds until my paw landed right. The living room turned grey and shadowy but all the edges got bright white. Neon, almost. The microwave light was cutting the room apart. I hopped to the kitchen. I found a magazine and a recipe with my feet before I got there. Hadn’t been looking, but the time was right, and they made a good pair on the counter, so I put ‘em on top of each other, like brothers sleeping. The fridge woke up when I got near it and hissed at me. It wanted to sleep too. A bunch of crumbs from food I’d made sometime had gotten caked into the grease on the stovetop. With the light right above them., they had no shadow. Like the islands I’d just read ‘bout I got a bunch of those crumbs tangled in my fur as I reached for the lasagna tray. After I’d fed the icebox I washed them away under the faucet. I couldn’t get them all.

I dried my paws off on a little rag on the oven door. The microwave light turned off after two stabs at the button. The end of a day like this takes your attention. I gave what I had. When that last light went out the room got painted black for a bit. I saw the waving stalks and grass out the windows, square spots in the tar. After my eyes got to clickin’ into it, the corners of the niceties started to burst out. Shooting stars, leavin’ dust on the rest of the rest. Like sugar on top. The shape of things started to come through the glitter like a fishing net catching a little skeleton of my house. Everything best seen at its edge.

I was tired now, but I wanted a little more before I curled with the rest of my house in sleep.

I walked out onto the back porch and down its steps to the lawn. The grass was dry, and cracked under my feet like parchment paper, soft and warm and brittle. I turned to the house. I could see the night past it through the windows but the house proper was like slate, a big cut of black leaned to the sky.

I went for what I came for and turned around. The moon hung low on the wheat. It held out in a circle, a darker black than anything else. I lived here for over a year now and hardly looked at these fields. All it’d been was color out the window, gold in summertime, brown in December. Two in the morning and now it was indigo and alive. It’d been grown by somebody I’d never met and who made their pocket money with it before I’d been born. Most likely. Maybe they didn’t care anymore and it came up by itself. Didn’t matter. It had me. When people said Bunnyburrow I didn’t think of my house or Mom’s or the bakery or anything but plowland. Big empty space. I thought of what’s everywhere here. I thought of what I took for granted.

The heart is a muscle, and it can only work so hard in a day. I'd kept me going and it made me feel. Hearing it in me said nicely I'd had enough.

When I got to sleep I got caught up in a dream about a star that never went down.


End file.
